Music Therapy Interventions for Improving Fluency Among People Who Stutter

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Re: Long Term affects

From: Erika Shira
Date: 19 Oct 2008
Time: 13:06:46 -0500
Remote Name: 66.92.76.147

Comments

"Have you in your practice seen continued success after therapy has stopped?" Great question. I haven't tended to see many of my clients again once we've completely stopped therapy. I have worked with a number of clients where we might have started out working on generalized anxiety, then moved to work on fluency, then moved on to work on, say, processing issues about one's parents or whatnot. So I have seen improvements in fluency continue while we're no longer addressing it. There is certainly MT literature that talks about how effective techniques are the ones that bring about long-term neurological change rather than effects that are only present while the musical support is there. We of course learn about this so that we can choose the techniques that bring about change rather than acting as a crutch. My hope is that I'm using the generalizable and long-term techniques most of the time. From a social/emotional standpoint, we do know that the process of forming a respectful relationship with a healer and having a positive experience is something that has life-long effects. This is something we tend to talk about in the psych fields, but not as much in other types of healing. I do believe that the relationship is very important in any type of healing, or any sort of service, really. I've certainly had experiences where someone wasn't able to help me, but the experience was very positive because of the integrity and supportive nature of the provider. This isn't to say that it's appropriate for us to be ineffective most of the time as long as we're supportive. It's just to say that none of us are going to have quantifiable positive effects with everyone we work with, but we can at least go home at the end of the say knowing that we were honest and respectful and acted with integrity with everyone we saw.


Last changed: 10/19/08